


Lodestar

by flecksofpoppy



Series: Unabsolved [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-13 21:17:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10522050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flecksofpoppy/pseuds/flecksofpoppy
Summary: There is no retreat.





	

_There is no retreat._

This is what is repeated to them from the time Annie’s legs are too short to fit the pants she shows up wearing for warrior selection by the Marley, and still it’s repeated when her legs are too long to fit into children’s clothes any longer.

It’s worked into their bones as their bones are worked into the mud, into the heartbeat that she hears at night before they’re awoken for drills. It’s the pulse of her father’s word, _I’m sorry, I’m sorry._

*

_There is no retreat._

This is what Annie hears in her dreams from the first time she joins the Survey Corps and her empty gaze is accepted without question, given credence for all the horror that she’s supposedly seen—the devastation to her fabricated village and family and human history by the Titans. For all the lies she’s told, though, bearing witness to destruction is not one of them.

She salutes easily, because giving over a heart is a gesture for people who still have something to lose.

*

_There is no retreat._

Annie knows forsaken fathers and desperate parents, but she knows nothing of a thirst for vengeance; Eren fascinates her, how he doesn’t know how to kick a leg or ankle out from under a human body, how he tries so hard to measure up to the physicality of death.

She teaches him to fight one dudt afternoon as Reiner loses his mind and Bertolt watches. At first, she looks to the horizon, but eventually, looks inward, because there is nothing to go back to.

*

_There is no retreat._

Killing the mindless Titans captured by the Survey Corps is simple, slice to the neck and she doesn’t even wonder who they might have been before, since she doesn’t remember who she is, either. 

These two have been given names—Sonny and Bean—perverse subjects fit for research the same way that she was with trousers too short, assessed and prodded and scrutinized for the suitability of murderer.

Annie dreams of her father and the letters he said he’d send; she has nightmares when Marco and Jean and Mina receive letters from their families, when Mikasa asks quietly what happened to her mother, since Annie knows how to sew.

*

_You will suffer in the name of a cause, and in that fire, you will redeem your betrayal._

Annie can smell the tears of Reiner’s madness in the morning when he greets their false comrades, the stench of Bertolt’s nervous sweat in the night; she resents both of them. Many lost their minds during the Marley training and many wept into their bunkmate’s chest, terrified of the fact that there is no retreat and that _you will be eaten unless you eat the enemies in Paradis._

*

_You will eat, and eat, and eat, and—_

Annie cannot eat bread some mornings, so she gives it to Sasha, accidentally endears herself, the way she accidentally endeared herself to Eren. The way she has endeared herself to _comrades_ and how this life is death, but not _no retreat, no retreat._

It took her years and beatings and starving to learn how to encase herself in crystal, but now, she would give her heart and her blood and her body to stop everything.

*  
_I’m sorry._

The words would have gotten her killed, and although she cannot believe her father when he says the world is against her, that she just need come home, she means them.

But home is a concept, not an anchor—she learns this from Eren, how he spits out dirt when she pushes him into it, how he stands up because he wills it.

_There is no retreat._

* 

When the Commander of the Survey Corps demands his troops retreat, to return to safety, she falls. 

She wonders if this is mercy on the island of a forbidden land she never understood; she wonders if her father hears her scream; she wonders if anyone forgives her.

She expects no one to forgive her.


End file.
